Globalization and Localization: On the Dual-track Strategy in Library Genealogy Services in Mainland China

Abstract

As the old saying goes, “great time of peace and prosperity, good opportunity to compile genealogy”, therefore, the Chinese who always think highly of blood lineage make a folk wave of genealogy research in recent years, and consequently many libraries seek to meet the demands. It has been a long-standing tradition for the Chinese libraries to collect family literature, while in the second decade of the 21st century, they present a new look by providing public oriented genealogy services. For example, in the north, the National Library of China launched ouroots.nlc.gov.cn in 2011, which is an integrated genealogy platform for the Chinese all over the world to query, compile, educate and research family trees; while in the south, cooperating with the Genealogical Society of Utah, the Guangzhou Library opened their Family Search Center to local people in 2013. The ouroots program, on the one hand, depends on the National Library’s own abundant genealogy collections, on the other hand, gathers local contributions from different parts of the earth in one place using the internet. Coincidentally, the Guangzhou Library program, for one thing, integrates local collections and outside resources of overseas professional institutions, for another, dedicates itself to fostering the genealogy culture of the Lingnan Area. In both cases, the old-time chains of collection and region that limit the genealogy services have been broken, and the same dual-track strategy of localizing as well as globalizing is shown in the users, the resources and the forms of services. Adopting the method of case study, this paper is going to structurally tackle, analyze and compare these two representative programs, and then make a summary and comment on the dual-track strategy, which demonstrates the innovation and exploratory nature of library genealogy services in Mainland China.